18 minutes. That’s how long nearly every single Conquest match in Battlefield 1 lasts. 18 minutes, or first team to 300 points. Hell, I can’t remember any of my matches ending because the score limit was reached. But that’s changing today.

I’m not the biggest fan of the Conquest changes made in Battlefield 1, but at least time won’t work against us anymore. It’s hard to mount a comeback when the timer is your biggest enemy.

I still think ditching the ticket system was a bad idea. Now, Conquest seems like just a big version of Domination. Still, maybe ditching the timer will help the ebb and flow of Conquest matches in Battlefield 1. The timer meant whoever had the best start typically won. I’ll be jumping on tonight to see how removing the timer improves the flow of the matches.

Today’s patch is also addressing the connection woes facing the Battlefield 1 beta. Battlefield fans are pretty much used to these connection problems already. Who can forget all the problems during Battlefield 4’s launch?

At the same time, DICE is putting their servers under a lot of pressure today to simulate what launch will probably be like. The devs say some downtime might happen throughout the day.

Starting today, we are simulating extreme launch situations to test BF1 servers. You may experience downtime throughout the stress test.

It looks like a lot of folks in the U.S. are taking advantage of their Labor Day weekend for some Battlefield 1 action. DICE and EA have to be pumped seeing these numbers. Battlefield 1 is well on its way to becoming another hit in the Battlefield franchise.

EA said last month they are taking a slightly more conservative approach with their Battlefield 1 sales projections. “Typically a Battlefield does 15 million in a year. Our guidance is slightly under that and we hope that excitement builds and it’ll go through that number, but for now it’s slightly under that number,” said EA’s chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen.

We’ll see how Battlefield 1 stacks up against the other shooters this holiday season including Titanfall 2, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and Gears of War 4.